H O N O U R AB L E FRI E ND S?
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Caroline Lucas
Honourable Friends? Parliament and the Fight for Change
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Published by Portobello Books 2015 12 Addison Avenue London W11 4QR Copyright © Caroline Lucas 2015 The right of Caroline Lucas to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 Photograph on p. ix: copyright © PA. Photograph on p. 1: copyright © Andy Fell. Photograph on p. 87: Parliament. Photograph of Caroline Lucas at Balcombe on p. 269: copyright © Rex Features. All rights reserved. This book is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publisher, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly. A CIP catalogue record is available from the British Library 987654321 ISBN 978 1 84627 593 7 eISBN 978 1 84627 594 4 Typeset by Avon DataSet Ltd, Bidford on Avon, Warwickshire Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
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For Richard, Theo and Isaac
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Contents Preface Prologue
ix xvii
PART ONE: OUTSIDE IN 1. The Shock of the Old: How Parliament Looks from the Inside 3 2. Coalition and Opposition: How Tory Ideology Goes Unchallenged in Parliament 13 3. Austerity: How Bankers’ Blunders Are Being Used to Punish Us All 26 4. National Ill-Health: How Privatization Is Hollowing Out Our Public Services 45 5. A Voice for the Environment: How Vested Interests Threaten Landscape and Wildlife 57 6. Taking to the Streets: How Parliament’s Failings Are Driving People to Protest 74 PART TWO: THE FIGHT FROM WITHIN 7. Power for Sale: How Big Business Drives Government Policy 89 8. Climate Change and the Politics of Hope: How We Could Still Avoid the Worst if We Act Now 103
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9. Heat, Light and Homes: How We Could All Have Warm, Affordable Places to Live 123 10. A Tale of Two Policies: How Old-Style Politics Blocks Progress 139 11. Foreign Adventures: How Arrogance and Deceit Have Brought Death in Their Wake 152 12. A Modest Proposal: How Women’s Voices in Politics Will Enrich Us All 166 13. Arrest: How a Peaceful Protester Ended Up in a Police Cell 180 PART THREE: A BETTER WAY 14. A Parliament that Works: How We Can Start to Make Parliament Serve the People 193 15. A Valuable Prize: How the Mechanics of Elections Push Voters Out of the Picture 209 16. The Progressives: How Those Who Want a Fairer Society Could Work Together 224 17. Sovereignty: How Real Power Can Be Returned to the People 236 18. Trial: How We Still Have the Right to Protest – for Now 251 19. Into the Unknown: How the Next Parliament Will Shape Our Futures 262 Notes
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281
Further Reading
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With Richard after the election result, Brighton, 7 May 2010
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Preface
‘We can no longer rely on the established parties, nor can we go on working solely through extra-parliamentary channels.There is a need for a new force, both in Parliament and outside it.’ Petra Kelly When I first read those words nearly thirty years ago they captured everything I felt about politics. Mainstream political parties lacked the courage to adopt radical solutions to the social and environmental problems we face. More than that, they were very often responsible for those problems in the first place. Parliamentary politics seemed incapable of embracing the change that was – and still is – so urgently needed. But protest, though vital, was not enough. We needed what Petra called an ‘antiparty’: one that would seek power but never sacrifice morality; that would enter Parliament but never become part of it; that would always remain, at heart, a party of the people. It was a compelling ideal; and Petra Kelly helped bring it to life as a co-founder of the Greens in Germany. As one of the first Green deputies elected to the Bundestag in March 1983, she entered the chamber bearing armfuls of sunflowers, instantly bringing colour and life into the grey world of traditional politics; though her political career was cut tragically short in 1992, she remains an inspiration for many in the Green movement and beyond. xi
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In Britain, there seemed no chance of a similar breakthrough. The three main parties had it sewn up: a political establishment, based on an undemocratic and unfair electoral system, which made it very nearly impossible for smaller parties to break in and shake up the cosy consensus. When I joined the Green Party, back in 1986, my parents were bemused. ‘Why don’t you join a proper party?’ they asked. I could see what they meant, for there seemed little prospect of us ever being elected. But the Green Party has always been the only political home I could imagine. And simply by existing, we showed people that there was a positive and hopeful alternative. The establishment fought hard to keep us out: everything from denying us airtime during election periods, to requiring a deposit of £500 to stand in each constituency – a total of around £250,000 across England and Wales, and far too much for us to raise. Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats could agree on one thing at least: they wanted to leave no space for alternative voices. Indeed, if politics were a business – and I sometimes wonder whether that is so far-fetched an idea – it would be a prime case for a referral to the Competition and Markets Authority for monopolistic collusion in excluding new entrants to the market. But on 7 May 2010, the very nearly impossible did, finally, after so much hard work by so many people over so many years, happen – and the Green Party won its first seat in Parliament when I was elected to represent Brighton Pavilion. It was a moment of history: the first new political movement to enter Parliament in nearly a century. There was so much we wanted to do, so many important issues to raise, laws to try to change, ways to put social and environmental justice at the top of the agenda – and most urgent of all, policies to introduce to address the growing threat from climate change. I was haunted by the words of the actor Pete Postlethwaite in The Age of Stupid, a powerful film about the climate crisis: ‘Why didn’t we save ourselves when we had the chance?’
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But in one of the worst examples of bad timing imaginable, at precisely the moment when we most need urgent action by political leaders to address the accelerating climate threat, our political system is broken, and politicians are widely held in deep contempt. And so the issue of political and parliamentary reform was also to become a major focus of my work. I have come to see, up close, how unless Parliament changes, progress in every other area of our national life faces delay or obstruction. Reform is not an abstract issue, remote from our everyday concerns about job security, or the state of the National Health Service. It is reform that will allow us to take back control of Parliament, and ensure that our government makes decisions in our interest: not just in terms of climate change, but in promoting decent, well-paid jobs rather than the profits of multinationals; or investing in the NHS as a truly public service, not hollowed out through privatization. This book is a record of progress so far, the challenges and setbacks as well as some successes. It has been put together during late-night train journeys between London and Brighton, it has been scribbled on bits of paper and saved as email drafts. It is built from conversations with colleagues and constituents, and from snatches of diary entries that I’m usually too tired to complete. It is – probably all too clearly – not a conventional political memoir, written during a time of reflection. Nor is it a manifesto. I would have loved to say more about all that my colleagues in the Green Party have achieved over the years, and what the Greens can offer now and in the future. But this is not that book. Rather, it’s an ‘of-the-moment’, from-the-trenches snapshot of the first five years of coalition government. It does not aim to be comprehensive – many things are left out – and if it has the quality of being rough and ready, that’s because, of necessity, it is. But I hope it might have some value as the view of an outsider, inside; in particular, how Parliament needs to change if it is to have any hope of re-engaging with the mass of people it is meant
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to represent, and rising to the serious social and environmental challenges we face. Our faith in politics has taken so many knocks in recent years: the MP expenses scandal; the way MPs have colluded to block giving constituents the power to hold their MP to account through the right of recall; the broken pledges on the NHS and tuition fees; and the lies that surrounded the launch of the Iraq War. And people have shown they want a different kind of politics, from the 45 per cent vote in Scotland for independence and how the membership of the Green Party has more than doubled in less than a year; and even the rise of UKIP. If nothing else, it shows that our generation has a unique opportunity to reshape the way we’re governed. The book has three parts. In the first, I am the outsider in Parliament, seeing this institution for the first time, exploring it, trying to understand it, and learning how to make it work. In the second, I am fighting from within, doing my best to tackle vested interests and representing the ideals and interests of those who had elected me in Brighton. And in the third, I try to articulate a vision of how our politics could be different. Writing this book has shown me how much more is still to be done, and how much I want to be part of that work. There is a danger that our politics will become more corrupt and our society more divided, and that the voice of the people will count for less and less.When I was elected, I was enormously proud that the people of Brighton should put their trust in a new political movement, and vote for our positive and principled alternative to the politics of division and fear. I hope I have repaid that trust; and that I can continue the work I have begun. This book has also reminded me how much I owe to others. To my husband Richard and my sons Theo and Isaac, whose love and support have been my rock; to the people of Brighton, whose faith in me and whose act of going out to vote has given me the privilege of representing them in Parliament; to Cath Miller, who
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has marshalled and coordinated all those campaigners, experts, politicians and volunteers I have worked with since being elected, and also managed my office, and all those who have worked with me in Westminster and in Brighton. And finally to Emily Wilding Davison. Each day in Parliament, on the walk (or run, as the case may be) from my office to the chamber, I pass the memorial to the suffragettes. I see the scarf that Davison wore when she was killed while campaigning for the vote in 1913. She is a reminder of all those who have gone before in the struggle for true equality and justice; and a reassurance that there will always be others who will join the cause.
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Prologue Election night. It is one of the few national rituals familiar to us all. First the pundits in the studio, the exit polls and computer graphics, marginal seats and swingometers. Then the results themselves: brief scenes of candidates shuffling onto a platform in a draughty hall, their set faces and rosettes somehow placing them apart from the rest of the human race. Even the more colourful candidates, the Monster Raving Loonies or the Miss Whiplashes, are somehow reduced to an anxious dullness, waiting for the returning officer to step hesitantly up to the microphone, for a few minutes under the eyes of the nation, to read out the results. ‘I, John Barradell, being the acting returning officer for the constituency of Brighton Pavilion . . .’ I’ve sat up watching elections for as long as I can remember. As a child, with my parents, it was little more than an excuse for a late night. As a student, it meant more to me, particularly when a woman became prime minister for the first time. Then came a decade of defeats for Labour, which seemed unable to mount a credible challenge to triumphal Thatcherism. Political issues mattered to me then; but not politics. ‘. . . the number of votes cast for each candidate was as follows.’ Even after I took the plunge and joined a political party, the Greens, I was still on the outside. We stood to give people an alternative, one they could vote for with a clear conscience, without the compromises and evasions of traditional politics.The height of our ambitions was to save our deposit or win a seat on a local council. xvii
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‘Leo Atreides, Independent, nineteen votes. ‘Nigel Carter, UK Independence Party, nine hundred and forty-eight votes.’ Now, twenty years later, I have stepped through the glass screen. I am there among them, looking out over the crowds, conscious of the glare of the lights and the TV cameras, as the returning officer continues to read in his dry, formal voice. ‘Caroline Lucas, Green Party, sixteen thousand, two hundred and thirty-eight.’ A cheer goes up from a section of the audience: my own supporters, who have worked for months and years to convince those sixteen thousand, two hundred and thirty-eight people to vote for me. Only those who have been through a political campaign can possibly imagine the work they have put in, against the odds. They are delighted, but incredibly anxious: they don’t know if those sixteen thousand votes are enough to give us victory, or to leave us painfully, horribly, close, as also-rans. ‘Nancy Platts, Labour Party, fourteen thousand, nine hundred and eighty-six.’ The Labour supporters begin to applaud – in sympathy for their defeated candidate. All their work, just as well intentioned, certainly just as hard, has come to nothing. To the waiting audience, the result is still in doubt. But not to me. I am learning that politics is full of stage management, and it turns out that the returning officer tells the candidates the result before they all troop on stage for the formal announcement. So we all stand awkwardly on the stage, not saying anything to each other, keeping a poker face. In my case, this isn’t hard. I don’t particularly feel like laughing or punching the air. In fact, I feel like being sick. ‘Charlotte Vere, Conservative, twelve thousand—’ His words are drowned out in an enormous cheer from the Greens. We have won. I wait for a rush of triumphant elation, but it’s nearly six in the morning, at the end of a draining election
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campaign, and most of all I feel exhausted.Then soon, deep down, comes a slow-burning realization that we have done something amazing. But there’s no time now to reflect or gather my thoughts. ‘. . . I hereby declare that Caroline Lucas is duly elected Member of Parliament for the Brighton Pavilion constituency.’ Another great cheer, and they are beckoning me up to the microphone. A sea of faces, some familiar and friendly, some hostile. Mostly, though, the crowd is curious, perhaps relieved that the long night is soon going to come to an end; but also pleased to be part of a small slice of history. Because this is the first time that there has ever been a Green Party MP. We’ve had councillors before, and Greens in the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh and Northern Ireland Assemblies. We’ve had Greens in the European Parliament – I’ve served two terms there myself – but in British politics, the only one that the professionals take seriously is Westminster. That’s the breakthrough the party has waited four decades to make. And here, now, tonight, it is me and the people of Brighton. It’s a bit like a dream: feeling you are in the wrong place, that what is taking place around you, though strangely familiar, is nothing to do with you. For a moment, it’s hard to concentrate. Even taking the few steps across the stage requires an effort of will. And then the crowd falls silent, with just a few last calls of encouragement, like the audience at Wimbledon settling down to a tense final set. Thank you.Tonight the people of Brighton Pavilion have made history by electing Britain’s first Green MP to Westminster.Thank you so much for putting your faith in me and in the Green Party.Thank you so much for putting the politics of hope above the politics of fear. I pledge that I will do my very best to do you proud. I’ve thought about this speech, of course.You don’t spend such a chunk of your life, and ask others to do the same, without it crossing your mind that you might win. It would also be awful, in the glare of the lights, to miss anyone out. So I thank the returning
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officer and his staff, the other candidates and my campaign team and supporters. It’s a ritual, but a heartfelt one: particularly in saluting Pete West, who was the first Green councillor elected in Brighton, back in 1996; and Keith Taylor, the previous Green candidate who got nearly 23 per cent of the vote, the base from which to win this time. And finally of course, thanks to my amazing family.To my supportive husband Richard, who’s been with me every step of the way. My incredibly patient kids,Theo and Isaac.Thank you so very much. These words make me wonder what I’ve committed them to for the next five years, as well as everything they’ve done up to now. I’ve been an MP for about two minutes, but the reality is sinking in. And I hope the other candidates will bear with me just while I reflect for a few more moments on what the Green Party has achieved tonight. Because this isn’t just a moment when one MP out of 650 is elected. It’s where a whole political party takes for the first time its rightful place in our Parliament. This has been the closest election for a generation, in the midst of the worst recession since the war, and after people’s faith in politics has been trampled into the mud of the expenses scandal. Not the best time to come to people and ask them to take a risk and put their trust in a new kind of politics. But we asked the people of Brighton to do that. And tonight we have their answer. One that will give hope to communities up and down this country. And so for once, the word ‘historic’ genuinely fits the bill. And so I thank everybody from the Green Party and beyond, and particularly the people of Brighton Pavilion, and I’ll do my very best to serve you to the best of my ability. It’s a relief to get off the stage and share the victory with so many of the friends and colleagues whose tireless work has made it possible. I also feel an immediate and profound sense of responsibility. It is now my duty to represent the 100,000 people of Brighton Pavilion – a huge privilege, but daunting too. And walking back home in the dawn through the familiar Brighton
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streets, the sea shimmering, the sun beginning to rise, and with all those supporters and well-wishers around too, I tell myself it will be all right.
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PART ONE
Outside In
Passing through the police lines at the Occupy demonstration outside St Paul’s Cathedral, 5 November 2011
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1 The Shock of the Old: How Parliament Looks from the Inside ‘You’ll get used to it.’ Margaret Beckett It’s the first day at a new school. Over two hundred firsttime MPs are directed to various rooms around Portcullis House, Parliament’s main modern office block, to be briefed on employing staff and collecting the post, to be given their computer passwords, and to be told about the facilities, from the Library to the numerous bars, there for their use. Only one thing is missing: somewhere to work. It’s a contrast to my first day at the European Parliament, ten years before. There, everything was in place – office, computers and the rest – and I could get started almost straight away. Here, I and the other new MPs are told that we will be allocated rooms in due course. For now we will have to squat in corridors or at cafe tables. It’s peculiar because all the rooms in Westminster have been unused for the last three weeks of the election campaign. Once Parliament is dissolved, existing MPs are no longer Members, only candidates, and therefore cannot use the Palace of Westminster. So the rooms can be cleaned and prepared ready for the new intake. This is not incompetence on the part of the officials who are employed to run the Houses of Parliament. It turns out that they 3
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are not the ones who allocate rooms to MPs. This is done by the main parties because, as with so much else in Westminster, rooms are a currency, or a perk. The better rooms go to the more senior MPs, or as rewards to those who do the bidding of the whips. If you are prepared to serve on the less exciting committees, and vote loyally with your party leader, then come the next election you may be rewarded with a room closer to the tea room or further away from the toilets. Those at the top of the tree end up with a view of the River Thames. If you rebel, or don’t do your bit, or belong to one of the smaller parties, you can go to the back of the queue and wait for your chance to squeeze into a broom cupboard with limited ventilation. Consequently, the allocation of rooms has to be drawn out while the whips wring the last advantage from this power. We newbies are told we will be lucky to get our rooms within a fortnight. It’s a reflection on the status, culture and hierarchy of Westminster, and also the misguided expectation that as new MPs we won’t have any serious work to do anyway. So at the end of my first day I have been given a pile of House of Commons stationery, but have nowhere to store it; a pigeonhole for my letters but no computer to read my emails; and a pink ribbon in the Members’ cloakroom on which to hang my sword before entering the chamber.The Member for Brighton Pavilion is open for business. Fortunately, I wasn’t alone. Cath Miller had run my European Parliament office brilliantly and it had been a lurking fear during the election campaign that she might feel that this was the time to move on. We hadn’t found a moment to discuss it. It felt like tempting fate to think about the practicalities of being an MP when the voters had yet to speak. But as soon as the results were announced, I had to know the answer. As I came down the steps from the rostrum I had taken her hand and said, ‘You will come with me, won’t you?’ ‘Of course,’ she had replied, practical as ever. ‘We’re just going
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through that door, and then we’ll meet the BBC people—’ ‘No, I don’t mean now, I mean come with me to Parliament!’ The job of running an office is incredibly important for an MP or MEP. So much of your life consists of running from one event to another – meeting constituents, delivering a speech, giving an interview, or voting – and in between trying to keep on top of a hundred other issues. So I might come out of a meeting, have no more than half a minute in which to catch up on all this before heading off to catch a train back to my constituency, and there would be Cath, who would know what mattered and tell me briefly all I needed to know. It also helped to have James Humphreys there. He is one of the few people in the Green Party who had worked in government – in his case five years as a senior civil servant in Downing Street. He was also a source of information on some of the strange customs of the place. One of these concerned the phrase ‘honourable friend’. A strange convention of Parliament is that you do not call other MPs by their names when speaking in the chamber. You don’t say, ‘Eric Pickles . . .’ (or Mr Pickles, or Eric) ‘. . . is talking rubbish.’ Instead, you say, ‘. . . the Honourable Member for Brentwood and Ongar is talking rubbish.’ Some MPs are accorded a higher status: so when Eric Pickles joined the cabinet he also became a member of the Privy Council (don’t ask . . .) and so is entitled to be called ‘Right Honourable’. And if the MP you are talking about is from your own party, then you say ‘My Honourable Friend’. As he was explaining this, it struck me that this was a phrase I would not be needing any time soon. As the only Green MP, I wouldn’t have any ‘honourable friends’. But I went on to reflect that this need not be a disadvantage. It meant that I was free to speak my mind. I could work across party boundaries, and raise issues that no one else wanted to pick up. But if this was to succeed, I was going to have to learn the rules of the game.
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The next day we set up camp at one of the tables in the atrium of Portcullis House, and tried to forget that after spending nearly half a billion pounds on this new building just a few years ago, Parliament still cannot provide MPs with basic office services. Camping, though, was difficult. Cath and James only had temporary passes and the security rules meant that they could not leave my side. If I went to a meeting, they either had to come with me – thereby losing the precious table – or hope none of the police noticed their dubious status if I left them behind. And though Portcullis House is very glamorous – it’s where all the new MPs I spoke to were hoping to have offices – the atrium is noisy and very exposed. More positively, it meant that I also saw one or two familiar and friendly faces who came over to offer their congratulations. Later on in my first day in Parliament, we ventured through the tunnel that links Portcullis House to the main Palace of Westminster. Compared with the modern, glassy, coffee-lounge world I have left, the old Palace seemed rather drab and down at heel. The wood panelling is gloomy, the carpets have come straight from a 1970s pub, and there’s a pervading smell of school dinners. But the chamber itself is still impressive: smaller than I had expected, but in a way that only makes the sense of theatre and of history all the more powerful. Even if the tour guides didn’t keep talking about it, and there weren’t portraits and statues of the towering parliamentary figures of the past at every corner, from Cromwell to Churchill, via Palmerston, Gladstone and Lloyd George, it would still be intimidating. It seemed inconceivable that I was going to sit on those green benches, let alone stand up and cross debating swords with the Queen’s First Lord of the Treasury. In a corridor on the way to the chamber was another piece of history: a small display about the suffragettes and their campaign for votes for women. It even has the scarf worn by Emily Wilding Davison when she was killed by the king’s horse on Derby Day at
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Epsom. I was particularly touched by how proud the Commons staff are of the suffragettes, always ready to explain how two suffragettes chained themselves to the grilles in the Ladies Gallery; now part of the display. Or how Emily Davison hid in the broom cupboard next to the Chapel of St Mary Undercroft, beneath Westminster Hall, on census night in 1911 so she could legitimately give her place of residence on the census form as the House of Commons.This testimony to their courage has become a source of inspiration each day I pass to and from the chamber, as it has to many men and women before me. (Tony Benn even put up a commemorative plaque outside the broom cupboard: quite illegally, as he later recounted with pleasure.) Back at my cafe table, we talked about building some crossparty alliances. The more I could work with others, the greater the difference I could make on the issues and causes that mattered for Brighton and for the country: and this would be easier for me than an MP with deep-rooted party allegiances and rivalries.The first of these was with the Scottish Nationalists and Plaid Cymru, who were part of an informal group that pooled information on upcoming government business. They were very helpful and invited me to join this group without any preconditions. At once, I had some honorary honourable friends, and was plugged into the Westminster system a little more firmly. Another boost was being allocated a room in the Norman Shaw building, which turned out to be the old home of Scotland Yard. It had previously belonged to the eminent backbencher Michael Mates, and my stock rose when some of the more status-conscious MPs learned of my good fortune. I suspect that one of the senior officials in Parliament had a hand in it. They could not have been more helpful in seeing me settled in, and their staff were clearly delighted that the Greens had finally made it into Parliament: ‘You’ll be a breath of fresh air,’ one said. In the immediate aftermath of the expenses scandal, there was a sense of change around Westminster. More prosaically, having
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a proper office with space for several desks (and windows you could open!) would mean we could work far more effectively: and even in the first few days, I realized just how many letters and messages from my new constituents there would be, some raising very difficult and sensitive issues, and how important it was that each was dealt with properly. Meanwhile there were more new rules and procedures to absorb. If I were an MP for one of the main parties, I would receive a ‘Whip Sheet’ detailing all the business of the House in the week to come, and how badly the whips would take it if I were to vote the wrong way, or not turn up at all. The votes are helpfully underlined once, or twice for more important business, or three times if attendance is mandatory – hence the term ‘three line whip’. This helps the whips control their ‘troops’: and means the troops don’t have to think about the issues. In fact, they don’t even need to know what it is they are voting on, and in my first few trips through the voting lobbies there were plenty of MPs who had run from their offices when the division bell rang without knowing the name of the bill being debated, but sure how they were supposed to vote. And if they forgot, they could always look at who else was going through the ‘Aye’ or ‘No’ lobbies, and be guided by whether they were surrounded by their own side or not. (Sometimes even ‘old hands’ go into the wrong lobby by mistake and have to explain themselves to the whips. You could call it being caught short: you are not allowed to ‘reverse’ out of the lobbies once you’ve gone in, so one way of covering up a mistake, apparently, is to hide in the loos in the lobby until the voting is finished.) It was on one of these early votes that I first wondered why it is that we have such a system. So much about the way Parliament works is obscure or downright weird. (Do MPs really need a snuffbox at the entrance to the Commons Chamber in case they need a quick snort before going in?) This means that it’s not always easy to see what is stupid-but-irrelevant and what
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is comic-but-harmful. Being old and looking odd isn’t in itself a bad thing. The guards outside Buckingham Palace in their red tunics and bearskin hats might look like they are from another century, but the soldiers themselves are highly trained professionals and they carry modern weapons, not blunderbusses. After a few weeks I began to suspect that because Parliament is completely stuffed with strange customs, like a cross between Ruritania and a Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera, it’s easy to make fun of the whole thing, and not take it seriously. So Black Rod’s silk stockings, the archaic, Anglo-Norman language and the right of a single MP to veto a Private Member’s Bill all just seem at first sight part of a venerable yet lovable institution, one that might not have kept up with the times but is rooted in solid virtues: the ‘Mother of all Parliaments’. Yet while fancy dress is harmless, having a ban on breastfeeding is a terrible signal to send to women thinking of standing for Parliament and are planning to have children or already have a young family. It shows that they are not welcome; and that they are currently so marginalized they have been unable to challenge a ban that almost every other workplace and public space has long since done away with. Similarly, the right to veto Private Members’ Bills in effect puts yet more power in the hands of the elected government, and weakens the right of backbench MPs – those who do not receive additional salaries as government ministers or positions on the Opposition front benches – to pursue issues that matter to them or to their constituents. I was soon convinced that the current voting system in Parliament is not just a piece of inert tradition, but actively malign; and probably kept that way deliberately.The process itself is absurd. When a vote is called – which can happen at any time, though there are set times of day when most are more likely to be held – a ‘division bell’ begins to clang throughout the Palace (and in various bars and restaurants in the surrounding streets) to warn MPs that they have eight minutes to reach the voting lobbies.
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Whether or not you are in the middle of a select committee session or meeting constituents, you have to drop everything and run for it. The MPs then crowd into the lobbies, and file through one of two doors – the ‘Ayes’ who support the motion, and the ‘Noes’ who don’t – where they are counted and their names recorded. The whole pantomime takes around fifteen minutes for each vote, which means that MPs only have the chance to vote on a tiny proportion of the amendments put forward for each bill. It’s excruciatingly inefficient. After a few days of this, I asked some of my new MP colleagues whether anyone had looked into electronic voting. The answers were not very compelling. Some – presumably keep-fit fanatics, though you might not know it – think it works fine as it is. Others see it as a chance to catch up with other MPs, in particular ministers and other senior colleagues, if you can fall into step with them. What no one wanted to say – and maybe they didn’t realize it – is that most people like Parliament just the way it is. That feeling goes far beyond the voting system and is why Parliament is so resistant to reform. Before I was elected I’d heard it said that the Palace of Westminster is one of the best gentlemen’s clubs in London, and the only one you are paid for attending. It certainly offers plenty of comfort, service, and deference, all paid for by the taxpayer. Many MPs work hard, but the combination of status and power is still heady. If you are ready to accept it all at face value, the place will treat you like minor royalty – bringing with it the risk that you lose your sense of perspective (even of reality) and also forget who you are there to serve. Again, it only took a few days on the inside to understand how it was that MPs got themselves in such a mess over their expenses. There is a sense of entitlement that pervades this place like a colourless and odourless gas, creeping along the corridors and under every door. Some MPs still don’t see that the rules that they create for other people have to apply to themselves. For example, if you are given perks in other jobs, you are supposed
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The Shock of the Old 11
to pay tax on them as if they were any other form of income. But though MPs voted through the powers for HM Revenue and Customs to enforce those rules, there were those who didn’t think they should apply within the boundaries of Westminster. Even though the scandal had only recently broken, I was already hearing MPs complaining about having to retain receipts and submitting claims to the much-hated Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority. It was as if they had forgotten that for everyone else in this country, collecting receipts if you want to claim anything back is just one of those chores imposed on you by HMRC – in other words, by Parliament. Despite everything, a frightening number of my new colleagues didn’t see that you can’t have one rule for yourself and one for the other 60 million people in Britain, and still retain their trust. Fortunately, there were also MPs who saw that things need to change; not just about expenses, but opening up the whole place, making it more efficient, and giving more power to Parliament to scrutinize the government. It was hugely encouraging that John Bercow had been elected by MPs as a reform-minded Speaker. If we were to make further progress, cross-party support would be crucial; and I soon realized that this was perhaps an area where I could play a role, being free of the pressures and blandishments of the whips. But first, there was one further tradition in the House of Commons that I could not avoid. Every Member must speak in the chamber for the first time, and give what is called their ‘maiden’ speech. Like everything else, this is wrapped round with precedents. Some of these gave me no problem.You are supposed to praise your predecessor, and I was lucky that I genuinely felt that David Lepper, who had held the seat from 1997 until deciding to stand down in 2010, had been a diligent constituency MP.You also praise the constituency itself, describing some of its finer features, as if standing in for the local tourist board. That was a pleasure too, as I could talk about some of the places and
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12  Honourable Friends?
organizations that I was truly happy to celebrate, such as the women’s refuge RISE, alongside the charm of the North Laine or the beauty of the South Downs. One tradition, though, was a problem: that you were not supposed to be political. I could hardly utter my first words as the first Green MP to be elected and not mention politics, if only to say something about why this moment mattered, and why a Green voice in Parliament was so important. I was sure there would be a way of doing this that would not create needless controversy or offence: but then came Trafigura.
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